Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Incidents/Archive 3

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forensics of repressed memory

A number of IP contributions to this discussion imply that this was being used by a course of some description. The IPs trace to the Boston area. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:35, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I saw you asked the most recent IP if they can expand on any information about the class. I will try to follow that if they show back up, but also please post any updates here. Is there anything you feel needs to be done (on Wikipedia) now since the article has already been deleted? Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:52, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Not sure. It's now at Deletion review. Stuartyeates (talk) 06:02, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

A floundering class apparently under the radar

Not exactly an "incident", but there seems to be class here that's floundering and doesn't have much guidance.

MGMT90018 (talk · contribs) appears to be group account or perhaps the account of the instructor. There are also other registered accounts for each topic in the course with their own sandboxes: User:MGMT90018 Turnover/sandbox, User:MGMT90018 Absenteeism/sandbox. User:MGMT90018 Job Crafting/sandbox where the students (each with different user names containing "MGMT") are all working on the topics. In the first two cases, they have pasted the entire existing Wikipedia articles, Turnover (employment) and Absenteeism, into the sandboxes and are expanding them. The one on Job crafting appears to be started from scratch. They have now attempted to submit User:MGMT90018 Absenteeism/sandbox through the Articles for Creation process as if it were a completely new article. I explained to the student that expansions to articles can't be done that way and suggested that they or their instructor contact Wikipedia:Education noticeboard for help. The request at the AfC Help Desk and my response are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of User:MGMT90018 Absenteeism/sandbox. I suspect the course might be MGMT90018 Psychology of HR Practice at the University of Melbourne. Voceditenore (talk) 14:30, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Voceditenore. I looked at the history of the article you found at AfC and posted a "welcome student" template for everyone who had contributed, and a "welcome instructor" template on the instructor's talk page. They are welcome to engage. Thanks for doing what you did. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:49, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

University of Toronto Mississauga/CCT110: The Rhetoric of Digital and Interactive Media Environments (W14)

I first posted at this at the project I'm most involved with, WP:VG, seeking some direction, and got pointed here. I'm not sure how to interact with or approach education programs like this.

Education Program:University of Toronto Mississauga/CCT110: The Rhetoric of Digital and Interactive Media Environments (W14) is popping up on a lot of our (WP:VG) articles right now. This program is requiring their students to edit stubs and add a minimum of 500 characters (I saw "2 paragraphs" mentioned somewhere as well). This is resulting in a lot wordiness, gameguide-ish text, and NPOV bias or fluff. It also does not appear that the program has taught students on citation templates, as they are manually formatting citations in line or adding them to reference sections with hard coded numbering, which then require other editors to correct.

What's the best way to interact with programs like this or communicate these issues? I do not think it is entirely appropriate for myself or our project to need to educate each student individually on citations and the like. I've dealt with this on three articles so far and seen it on others that I didn't get involved in. Having to reformat and rewrite this is somewhat frustrating, but I also don't want to bite. -- ferret (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Ferret. Since there people are already people talking about this on the Video Game noticeboard I will meet you there to follow up with this. If anyone has further issues with this class unrelated to video games then voice those here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:34, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

And I've followed up on the talkpages of the professor and campus volunteers, directing them to the discussion at WP:VG. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all. We've indeed been following-up with your questions and comments on the noticeboard mentioned above. michaelh.dick (talk) 23:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Class project without a course page at University of California Irvine

There appears to be a class editing University of California, Irvine-related articles with no course page structure. (See [1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]) I've posted the {{Welcome student}} template on relevant talk pages; if editors more experienced with this kind of situation could provide some guidance as to how to proceed, I'd appreciate it. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 08:32, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

• Well that's no good. I'll try to track them down tomorrow and chat with their instructor. Please do let me know if you get any hints about who their instructor is before I manage to figure it out. Thanks for finding the class and bringing it here. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 11:07, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Judging from the usernames involved and types of edits, my best guess would be that the class is one of the general writing classes required of all students at the university. Unfortunately, there's a large amount of these classes taught every quarter and high instructor turnover, so I haven't been able to identify the specific instructor. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 20:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • The editors involved are essentially edit-warring (full disclosure, I continued to revert when I should not have, but once I realised the situation was turning into a slow-burning edit war, I haven't reverted since), or not following the BRD cycle. They're mostly re-adding information in the same general format (compare University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences, University of California, Irvine School of Social Sciences, Francisco J. Ayala School of Biological Sciences, and School of Social Ecology), so perhaps their grade depends on that information not being removed from Wikipedia? I've tried to engage at least one user ( here and here, but so far, there's been no direct response; it seems they don't really understand the concept of talk pages. I don't want to scare off new users, but it's getting out of hand. What do? --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 00:33, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Pinging Kevin Gorman, in case he's able to contact the instructor. If that doesn't work, post about it on each page's talk page, in the hope that other editors will see it and revert, so it isn't just you. Since the edits are not vandalism or defamatory, I don't see anything urgent about reverting them. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:45, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Sadly I couldn't track down the instructor, and am recovering from a concussion and limiting strenuous mental and physical tasks for the next couple weeks. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, I'm so sorry to hear that. TorriTorri, if you don't get good results from posting in article talk, please leave another message either here or at my user talk, and I'll take a look at helping you revert, so that you aren't alone in it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

School project in Września, Poland?

There seems to be a school project on historic buildings in Września, Poland. 4 articles I've seen so far, all newly-created articles by newly-registered single-topic editors, and one editor at Talk:Courthouse in Września says it is a school project. (That unfortunate editor had his article erroneously deleted by a tagger and admin who forgot that buildings don't come under A7, then was accused of being a sockpuppet when a classmate joined the discussion, and was taken to 3RR noticeboard when s/he kept removing speedy delete tags - quite an introduction to editing!) The other 3 articles involved are Water towers in Września, Manor house in Chocicza Wielka, Manor house in Chocicza Wielka. I've suggested that they ask their teacher to read Wikipedia:School and university projects. There's nothing particularly problematic about the articles, but it would be nice if we could get the teacher better informed. PamD 11:37, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

School project in Września, Poland?

There seems to be a school project on historic buildings in Września, Poland. 4 articles I've seen so far, all newly-created articles by newly-registered single-topic editors, and one editor at Talk:Courthouse in Września says it is a school project. (That unfortunate editor had his article erroneously deleted by a tagger and admin who forgot that buildings don't come under A7, then was accused of being a sockpuppet when a classmate joined the discussion, and was taken to 3RR noticeboard when s/he kept removing speedy delete tags - quite an introduction to editing!) The other 3 articles involved are Water towers in Września, Manor house in Chocicza Wielka, Manor house in Chocicza Wielka. I've suggested that they ask their teacher to read Wikipedia:School and university projects. There's nothing particularly problematic about the articles, but it would be nice if we could get the teacher better informed. PamD 11:37, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Wharton Business School course project?

See this section at ANI. Voceditenore (talk) 15:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Information Management for Business (IMB) at University College London

A rather poor edit to Cult brand from an editor whose talk page says "... is currently studying Information Management for Business (IMB) at University College London (UCL). The assignment given was to edit a Wikipedia article on the topic of Cult Brands." PamD 15:56, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

@ToniSant: Flagging this for you! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed):! Let's see whether the campus ambassador at UCL (@Raya.sharbain:) can take a closer look. --ToniSant (talk) 14:52, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a class at Animal testing

• Cpt2265nova (talk · contribs)
• Ejarvis2 (talk · contribs)
• Abdella anwarzai (talk · contribs)

They have shown up at that page making mostly useless edits that have been mostly reverted, in a manner that looks like an unidentified class project. Not a big deal to revert them, and I'm about to message their talk pages, but I figured I would note it here. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Medical students in Barcelona

There has been a spate of new user accounts this month, all part of a class named BQUB14 (see [6]). According to User talk:Jytdog#students, they are all members of a particular class at the School of Medicine at the University of Barcelona. They have been turned loose on Wikipedia to edit various articles on proteins and such, with widely mixed results, and at least one page protection arising from edit warring.

I have reached out to one of the students to see if I can learn the name of the instructor. If so, I will recommend this instructor to read up on WP:SUP. Any other actions that the regulars of this noticeboard can suggest? WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this! Users include BQUB14-Asegui, BQUB14-Iabad, BQUB14-Agrabosky, BQUB14-Mnezcollado, BQUB14-Ccarmona, BQUB14-Lbusquets, BQUB14-Martigues, BQUB14-Ebuades (really bad, edit warring led to page protection), BQUB14-Lpuig. I have asked a few times for them to talk more and for them to get their instructor to contact us too. Their assignment is apparently due Friday so the next few days might get a bit more intense with them. Jytdog (talk) 13:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): I know that in the past, WMF folks have been very helpful in communicating with educational institutions in situations such as this one. Perhaps you or one of the other people who work with you could reach out to the University of Barcelona School of Medicine. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't work for WMF anymore, but here's the people who do! @AKoval (WMF), FKoudijs (WMF), and TFlanagan-WMF: Can you help connect this class to the education efforts already happening in Barcelona? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:01, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Woops, I confounded WMF and Wiki Ed. This stuff is over my head, sorry! Maybe WikiDan61, Jytdog, or Kingofaces43 could help with that connection about Barcelona, since they are the editors who have actually been observing the edits in question. I was just trying to help connect them to staff people who could help. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the students involved are completely non-communicative. I've asked to be put in touch with their instructor to no avail. The one communication that we were able to get out of them was that their assignment was due today, so we might hope that the issue will blow over and the damage can be repaired. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 01:52, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

There has definitely been odd behavior. I recently reverted an edit at RAB6A. Not long after I had that edit thanked by the user I reverted, only to have to them re-revert again. I'm not sure if something isn't getting across or what, but interacting with these students seems like it will be tough either way. Seems like getting a hold of the professor or at least watching pages closely until the due date has passed at least (hopefully) seem to be the only options at this point. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:39, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

After pleading on the editors' and article's talk pages, there has been some progress with FERMT3. The student are now at least adding in-line citations. We clearly need to contact the instructor. Boghog (talk) 11:31, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to help out there as well. While they are at least starting to use citations, we're running into issues typical of student projects where it seems like they are writing a report rather than writing a Wikipedia article for a general audience. They're definitely moving too quickly for new users, but I'll see what I can tweak there to help out. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:08, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for all this hassle. I will contact the Amical people in Barcelona and see if they can help out talking to the students or the instructor. Thanks for keeping an eye out! FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi all, first of all thanks for your patience and for bringing this up. As an m:Amical Wikimedia member I must say this project is not part of one of our collaborations but we are trying to get in touch with the teacher to help him/her to improve their edits. I've contacted one of the students who answer your advices directly in Catalan language, hoping he/she puts me through their teacher. As we are doing other educational projects with the University of Barcelona, I'll try to send some emails to our collaborators to try to touch them IRL. I'll be back with some information as soon as i get it. Thanks again ;)--Kippelboy (talk) 05:31, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi again: I've contacted Amical members and volunteers who have done edu projects with this Faculty of the University of Barcelona. None of them knows the teacher but we have found that it already happened in Catalan wiki some time ago [7] and [8]. One of the volunteers who do edu projects told that he will contact "his project teacher" to see if our contact can discover who is the teacher of the BQUB students. Please give me some days. --Kippelboy (talk) 15:37, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Update: We've reached the teacher. He is a teacher of the Medicine Dept of the University of Barcelona. We are now arranging a meeting with him in real life so we can both know how to best collaborate with each other and how to better do an educational project on EN, ES and CA wikis. Thank you all for your time and patience.--Kippelboy (talk) 06:17, 3 November 2014 (UTC) (on behalf of Amical Wikimedia)

Update2: Finally we met the teacher in real life. We clarified with him the Dos and Donots on how to collaborate with Wikimedia and will guide him during next semester's edition. Thank you all for your patience again.--Kippelboy (talk) 06:37, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Stealth poli-sci class

There appears to be a poli-sci class editing without a course page. All of the accounts are similarly named and they have made edits today and on October 30th, all to US political biographies. The majority of the edits have been reverted for being unsourced or undue. There's a report at AN/I about it here. gobonobo ^{+ c} 21:15, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Apparent Canadian class assignment - anybody know about it?

Today a whole bunch of new articles appeared on Wikipedia about exporting Canadian agricultural technology to Nepal. Each is written by a different, new editor, about a different agricultural product. In some cases they tout a particular commercial product, in other cases a generic product or technology. None of them are suitable as Wikipedia articles; they are analysis and how-to.

Here is a partial list of the articles: ‪Exportation of Canadian Lentils to Nepal‬, ‪Dairy Cattle Genetics‬, ‪CDC Baler Oat‬, ‪Sorghum-Sudan Hybrid Grass‬, ‪Fruit tree grafting‬. I've been prodding them as I come across them, but is there any way to find out who is behind this - and get them to understand what is and isn't a Wikipedia article? --MelanieN (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Looking at the editing history of this page, it doesn't appear to be monitored and comments/complaints do not appear to be responded to. I will look around for someplace else to post this information. --MelanieN (talk) 02:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

This board isn't very busy, try WP:EDUN, many more eyes on it. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:21, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! --MelanieN (talk) 16:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Class from Lexington Kentucky

Issues with copy and pasting and use of primary sources. Lot of them. Editing pharmacology related topics. Anyone know who they are? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay 19 of them. Have received little instruction. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:28, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Have sent instructions through one of the students. Still unclear who the prof is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:13, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Class on search engine optimization editing Wikipedia?

See also WP:COIN#Link_building,

• Link building
• Web traffic
• HusnainMeerzadeh (talk · contribs)
• Hnancy (talk · contribs)

These two new users have been adding links to articles related to search engine optimization. This, of course, attracted attention, and they've been hammered with all the usual warnings. "Hnancy" writes on WP:COIN:

"Hnancy (talk) 05:08, 3 December 2014 (UTC) Hello that I am an informatics student at UW and it is really my class project to edit a wikipedia page. Previously I tried to make a new topic called "link popularity" but later I adopted teacher's advice to work on the link building page. Moz didn't pay me at all and I even never heard of this company before. I accidentally used the resource from searchenginejournal because I think it is authentical and it has the resources I needed(I didn't realize that it has backlinks to Moz.)i actually could't finish my homework right now because I couldn't add new contents to the page. I am now editing the conflicts section and I try to add a brief section called "link building tactics" (which is highly related to link building I think). I hope I can finish these edits today so I am able to turn in my homework."

Assuming this is correct, somewhere there's an instructor at UW who issued a really bad assignment. Adding spammy-looking links to the link building article was certain to attract attention. That may have been the point. It takes lots of time to clean this up, and if there's enough of it, it can lead to a schoolblock. Can anyone find the instructor responsible and get them a clue? Here's the University of Washington information systems course list for the current quarter.[9] Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 02:41, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Husnain is just spamming. I don't see that he has anything to do with the other user, except that they both pounded on the article at roughly the same time. Choess (talk) 05:18, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

And it gets worse :-(

It appears that we are outnumbered at least 100 to 1.[10]

Massive amount of plagiarism with no one cleaning it up. Have proposed a mass roll back of this entire classes edits. Please comment there. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Ed staff will be going through all this class's edits and cleaning up bad content today. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Expanding plagiarism detection

I am looking at expanding the copy and paste detection bot globally. Am looking at hiring staff to help. They will not only collect data on the size of the issue for publication but also edit Wikipedia. Are people here okay with that? Please join the discussion here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

W. B. Yeats

Can someone here, who has time, take a look at W. B. Yeats. It's a featured article and apparently part of a class project, [11]. I'm sorry if I've been bitey, and probably it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a campus ambassador with better people skills than I have to explain the complexities of editing featured articles. Also, I think that's something that should be mentioned in the training. My inclination right now is to let them do the work and then revert after they're done. Victoria (tk) 00:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I took a look, and I think that what you and other experienced editors have been doing is fine. I noticed that you said on the talk page that you were concerned that the students' grades might be affected. You may find it helpful to see WP:NOTTA, where it is made clear that student grades are never Wikipedia editors' problem, and you should feel free to revert whatever needs to be reverted, following the usual practices of talk page discussion (as you have been doing). If student edits are reverted, putting the students through the process of going to talk is, or ought to be, part of the education process, once an instructor has decided to use Wikipedia (and instructors who haven't thought of that aren't doing their jobs). I see that the students have already had Template:Welcome student put on their talk pages (one red-linked editor has not, not sure if that's a student, but maybe that one should get it too), so that's exactly right. Anyway, stewardship of FAs trumps any perceived student "own"ership of a page. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tryptofish for responding. After sleeping on this and thinking about it, I agree with you. I'll probably end up reverting again, but first will try to go through the page, figure out what was done, and explain why I've reverted (which will be a huge task as it was basically done in a single edit). At that point edits can be added back if consensus is achieved. It would be nice if we could determine who is running this class and have some outreach. I get the sense that we're *only* Wikipedia editors and perhaps don't understand the subject, and my view is that professors should never assume who might be curating or what their qualifications are. Anyway, this will take a lot of time to sort out. Also, since I'm here posting a general call out to the people who are involved with Wiki Ed: this is the last week of classes for many colleges in the US. I, myself, have final projects to grade this week, and so am very busy, yet at the same time am dealing with the Yeats issue and another that was brought to my attention on my talk - is there any chance of getting more eyes on these boards in the next few weeks? Thanks. Victoria (tk) 17:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Good luck with that :) The Education Program has ruined all of my Thanksgiving holidays for quite a few years now, since students are cramming to get bad edits in just as US editors are preparing for holidays. The Education Program is little able to do much about that, and few professors seem aware of WP:OWN#Featured articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:09, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I don’t have any record of this student being in a Wiki Ed affiliated course, and we prioritize helping student editors (especially during busy times like now) who are enrolled in the courses we’re affiliated with. That being said, if you or anyone else does get in touch with the instructor, I encourage you to connect them with us so the instructor and students can go through our system next term, hopefully heading off problems like this in the future. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2014 (UTC) 

So you would like us to do the leg-work, even though we're unpaid volunteers? Victoria (tk) 22:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Let me be super clear: Wiki Ed takes full responsibility for classes that we have brought to Wikipedia. We train those instructors, we check their assignment design to make sure it's good for Wikipedia, and we step in if those classes have problems. When we have time, we're happy to help out with classes that are not part of our program, just like any other community member can, and as Helaine said, we're happy to try to educate instructors (assuming this class is a university class and in the US or Canada, which is the boundaries we work in) about how to do good Wikipedia assignments so they can be part of our program in the future. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:06, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To Victoriaearle's point, perhaps Template:Welcome student (and Template:Welcome medical student) should either be strengthened, to tell students to tell their instructor of the need to identify themselves and the course, or a new template should be created for that purpose. As I see it, once one of us unpaid volunteers has put a useful message via template on a student editor's talkpage, there really isn't a reason for us to dig deeper than that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

We can hat this or archive it or whatever. Thanks LiAnna for being super clear. Got the message. Loud and clear. Victoria (tk) 23:19, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Adding: LiAnna, I think your comment was quite rude, given that there are unpaid volunteers who have historically done quite a bit at this time of year. I've spent almost as much time today trying to help students from an unknown class as I have on the assignment I'm working on for my own class. Oh, yes, btw. I am a professor and I've been bringing students through here each semester for the past five years. But I've done it outside of WikiEd because I don't share your philosophy. I've had some conversations with a few people who are interested about how I do what I do, but mostly your group isn't interested. Which is fine. However, insulting an unpaid volunteer who is trying to help, trying to make things easier for students, and at the same time hoping to get the professor's attention is not helpful. Finding the class isn't hard. It can be done by looking at the contribs, the editors, etc. I'll follow up on my own with the university and try to find the professor because right now I'm ashamed that we invite students to edit here and yet when an unpaid volunteer asks for assistance the reply is prefaced by a "Let me be super clear". Victoria (tk) 23:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

@Victoriaearle: I'm sorry that I came off sounding rude or insulting to you; that wasn't my intent at all. I was trying to clarify what we take full responsibility for and what we feel should go through normal community processes. Clearly I didn't do that effectively, and I apologize for coming off as insulting to you. As this is the busiest time of year for both of us, now is not a good time, but maybe in a few weeks we could have a Skype call to talk about our difference in philosophy you refer to? I'd be really interested to talk with you more about that. If that's something you'd be willing to do, let me know, and I'll set a calendar reminder for myself to ping you in early January so we can schedule a time to talk more. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

LiAnna, sorry for not responding earlier. I was busy, and also thinking about your offer to Skype. I'm not against the idea of Skyping, but I'd prefer to have a transparent discussion. One of the issues I think WikiEd should address is that it seems to be a walled garden of sorts, and in my view it's crucial to pull the professors and the students into the community and have them adhere to community norms. I had a conversation about the subject with Mike Christie at about this time last year and wanted then to write up my philosophies in terms of bringing students here but didn't get around to it. In the meantime I've tried a couple of other class-room strategies which have worked really well. Instead of chatting via Skype, I'd prefer to write up my philosophies and then probably post to a subpage. We could then take it from there. Victoria (tk) 00:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I find Skype conversations useful to be able to have back-and-forth discussion quickly, but I'm happy to follow your suggestion instead. I'll ping you on your talk page in early January to get a conversation going again. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 04:25, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that, but this is an issue I've spent a lot of time thinking about and I'd prefer to lay something out in a thoughtful and collaborative manner instead of a quick back-and-forth. Essentially the problem of combining teaching pedagogies and learning outcomes in a digital environment, added to the fact that this digital environment is not just any environment and has a vibrant community, set policies, etc., etc., is tricky to solve. I'm not sure how much I'll be around in the next few weeks, but will have time in January to set up a sandbox and brainstorm some ideas. As a content editor I'm comfortable working that way and then we'd have the added benefit of being transparent. Anyway, thanks for the offer. Victoria (tk) 17:24, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Blocking students

Thankfully we have a copy and paste detection bot. Picked up this one User:Esth270 for a second time and I have blocked them.

We cannot let the education program fill Wikipedia full of plagiarism and poorly sourced content which I am seeing a lot of lately. Sigh. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:52, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: Since you brought this up here, and I'm going off line for a few hours I'll leave a note here first, before starting an AN thread. This new user is adding cited information, at least one of which appears to be from the public domain cursory review only. Do you have any comments you can add to this, maybe I'm missing something? Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 23:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Details here User_talk:Esth270#Copy_and_pasting. Which are you saying is from the public domain? While this is in PMC it does not appear to be public domain [12] This also does not appear to be CC [13] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:55, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, like I said, only cursory--so it's not public domain; but a block quote or some simple would have made this not be a copyright violation; the user had one warning and now is idef blocked for "plagiarism" which is not part of the blocking policy unless you are claiming they have risen to the level of "disruption" through continuous breaching of guidelines; I don't think an indef block is appropriate as a first block. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay so are you saying people are allowed to copy and paste blocks of text into Wikipedia? It was not "quoted". I have had one company's publishing department tell me that one gets 20 seconds in music and 7 words in text. So do we as a community have a policy on how much text people are allowed to copy and paste from sources? I have been using the seven word limit which this was much much over but if others want to raise it would be happy to follow community consensus.

We have a very strict policy on fair use of images on En Wikipedia. Do we allow text based on fair use as well? I agree copyright is complicated and happy to be clarified on where we draw the line. Do; however, not want to expose my WPMED to issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Moonriddengirl as the local copyright expert can you comment? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

A couple of points. :) User:Xaosflux, people get blocked for plagiarism - they have done since well before I became an admin. Jimmy took a firm stand on it himself in 2005: [14]. I haven't looked at the details of this particular situation, but an indefinite block is not an infinite one - it can sometimes be shorter than a defined length block, as quite often a person can be unblocked (especially for copyright issues) just by indicating that they understand. Typically, people are not blocked for copyright issues unless they persist after a warning or unless they have violated copyright across many articles, but there can be other circumstances and, again, I'm not familiar with this one.

We absolutely do allow text based on fair use - the policy and guideline are at WP:NFC. Every quotation from a copyrighted source is fair use. User:Doc James, whoever gave you those defined limits was making stuff up, at least if they were talking about the U.S. law that governs us. :) There is no clear defining line in what constitutes "substantial similarity" under the U.S. law - this is why court cases can be so contentious. It depends on so many subjective factors, including how important the content is, the level of originality, the way it is used and where it is used. (See http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html - "There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.") The courts consider all the factors of fair use. Quotation marks do not help, legally, in the U.S. As that same document notes, "Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission." However, quotation marks when copying from copyrighted sources not only helps on Wikipedia, but is required for a number of good reasons, including that we are identifying our fair use material, which allows people to determine whether it is permissible in their own reuse of our content. (Some countries have firmer laws on using non-free content than the U.S., which governs Wikipedia, does.) As a general rule of thumb, content that is copied from non-free sources without quotation marks or block quote is a violation of WP:NFC, which makes it in turn a violation of WP:C and hence a copyright violation. (As we are not a court of law, we cannot assess copyright infringement from the legal perspective, but only what is consistent with internal policy, crafted to remain within law. We're not accusing people of crimes here.) In most of the cases I've seen in my sixish years of working copyright on Wikipedia, copyright violation is an opportunity for education. Most people who run afoul of this policy are unaware of the concepts or good practices in this area. Blocks work best in conjunction with clear explanations so that they do not continue violating this critical policy as they grasp it. Some people are either unwilling or unable to correct their practices, and these people wind up de facto banned. It's not unusual to see such a person return with socks that are caught precisely because of their continued copy-pasting. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

One more thing - those who are not already familiar of it should be aware of this template in working with newer editors who run afoul of copyright policy: Template:uw-copyright-new. Even if you adapt it as part of a personal message, it can help. :) I'm not a fan of the icon, though. :/ A recent addition. The template was meant to be less scary in introducing a massive topic, but I worry that the icon undermines that. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

It was a lawyer from a multi billion dollar company who gave me this rule of thumb when they declined my request to use specific content. When it comes to law in the US it is not just who is "right" that matters but who has the most money. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

If they gave you a specific word count, Doc, they were wrong. In addition to the primary source above, see [15] for instance: "There is no set amount or percentage of the original work that may be used to determine fair use. Comparing the word counts between the original work and your work may be used as a guide, but the amount of the original work that may be used as fair use varies depending on the context of your use – look at how you add something new or otherwise transform the original work." See also Stanford: "There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation." Harvard offers some nuanced guidance on length at "What considerations are relevant in applying the third fair use factor—the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole?" That there is a specific word count is a common fallacy, and attending law school doesn't seem to make much difference. The odds of their successfully prosecuting claims under their own "seven word" rule seem pretty low. :/ In any event, while our policies are created to be stricter than US fair use to avoid pushing that line, we do not have a word count rule of our own. We really can't. In terms of substantiality, what's fair from a 500 page book may not be fair from a 500 word article or a 50 word poem, and length is not the sole determinant in any respect. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:52, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:Moonriddengirl I know they were wrong. But when one deals with a multibillion dollar company if they decide to bring out the lawyers it does not matter if you are right or wrong you typically lose either way. For example when the WTO told us the old Wikivoyage image was to close to theirs (even though it wasn't) we said okay and checked it. One must pick their battles. It is not hard to paraphrase. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Lots of disruption from that course; is anyone at the Education Program doing anything about attempting to contact the MIA Prof, User:BrooklynProf to give her better guidance about Wikipedia? Or to ask her (or her three assistants) to educate the students about Wikipedia and supervise their edits? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The prof is aware in this case and is meeting with the student to discuss the issues that occurred. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

That's good, but there are problems elsewhere :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I am NOT endorsing bulk copy pasting, I am saying that I disagree with an indefinite block being issued to a new editor for a guideline infraction. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:55, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste plagiarism is a "guideline infraction"? Copyright violation is against the law, and then there's WP:COPYVIO, which is identified clearly as "policy with legal consideration". Surely this is driven home by profs, and students caught plagiarizing (twice) usually fail the course. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah so you want me to simply allow the student to continue copy and pasting content into Wikipedia than? Are you against the reverting of "copy and pasted" text? User:Xaosflux I am not understanding your position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Google Knol was partly killed by having no mechanisms to deal with "copy and pasting" into it. [16] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc, I suspect he/she just wants you to reduce the block, maybe to time served? We probably wouldn't do that for a regular editor (MRG may know), but folks in here seem to treat student editors differently. In this case, if the prof already knows, there's likely a very big penalty on board already (as in, fail the course. assuming the prof is paying attention, that is). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:14, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

What I am looking for is that this students 1) still has a desire to edit 2) now has a clear understanding of what is required. Clarified this for them [17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:16, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: yes, just because they are a student doesn't make them any less of an editor. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:32, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: Your block reason listed is "Plagiarism", not "Copyright Violation". Plagiarism is not a component of the Blocking Policy, it is only a content guideline. If you mean to block for COPYVIO, please clearly explain to the user that their block is due to violation of the COPYVIO policy. A shorter block (perhaps 24 hours?) should also be sufficient to stop any disruption to the encyclopedia and give them time to read your messages, why make them go through additional bureaucracy to return to the project? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:28, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

To your other question, I fully endorse reversion of edits that are not constructive. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:30, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I take copyright seriously (If Commons admin doesn't care copyright, he should be desysopped!) but one warning then indef seems so harsh... Not saying block is wrong, but it's too long imo. — Revi 03:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes the user in question needs to clearly show that they understand what is paraphrasing before they can return to editing. And the way to show someone knows something is to get them to do it. Now because of these issues, if they are unblocked, their edits will need to be check. To show some respect for my time I include the requirement of properly formatting to make this easier.

An indef is not forever. Call me demanding but I just had a students agree to follow the requests and then not do so. How many students / classes of students are you two by the way keeping an eye one? Copyright violations are a big deal in my profession. Would the NEJM say no worries simply try again tomorrow? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Anyway this is called verifying WP:COMPETENCE. I assume they will likely pass. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) My classes (2, both run by Piotrus) has student 20 or less in total. Anyway, back to topic, I know indef is not forever, but it may be frustrating to newbies. If you feel indef is nessesary, that's fine (I'm not admin). I don't have strong opinion about this, just want you to say that I felt indef was too long. :p — Revi 03:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The student is here until their assignment ends on Dec 20th/23rd thus they are motivated. I have been in email discussions with the student in question.

User:-revi are you checking for copy and paste issues? I have found they run about 15-30%.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but if they do copypaste, that's likely copypaste and translation, as all students are Korean and likely to paste (and translate) in Korean. I have no idea to check source, tbh. — Revi 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: I double-checked my students' contents and I don't see problem on copyright... — Revi 05:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Good to hear :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

See also ANI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

ANI notices left, asked to continue the discussion here to prevent forking. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• This user has acknowledged the issue and wants to continue to be an editor, blocks are preventative not punitive--why do they need to continue to be blocked? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes they are preventative not punitive. We are now verifying that they are unlikely to do it again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

So many misconceptions, so little time. The student both committed plagiarism (failing to properly attribute the intellectual origin of material) and copyright violation (use of another's copyrighted text without permission). "A block quote" would have corrected the plagiarism problem, but not the copyright violation. The doctrine of "fair use" allows the use of copyrighted text without explicit permission in a number of cases; the boundaries are very fuzzy, and it's not as clear-cut as the publishing rep tried to make out to Doc James. However, Wikipedia is governed by WP:NFC, which allows brief quotations of copyrighted texts, but forbids extensive quotation. In this case, there was no reason the information of the quotes could not have been conveyed in an original, non-copyrighted manner, so I don't see a reasonable fair use claim to include them, in quotes or not. Note that copyright is a legal issue, not just a contravention of one of our Gormenghastly guidelines. ;)

Doc James should indeed have referred to "copyvio" instead of "plagiarism" as a reason, but I think overall his block was pretty reasonable. Maybe two weeks (which would cover the end of the semester) instead of indef would have been preferable, but indefinite is not infinite, he was obviously watching to see if the student would constructively engage, which she has, and as the situation is now moving towards constructive resolution, it seems he did the right thing. Choess (talk) 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• Concur with block and length Indefinite is not infinite. As soon as the person who has been blocked expresses a clear understanding of why they are blocked, and how they plan to behave differently going forward, they can be unblocked immediately. No need to wait two weeks (as Choess expresses above) or any other random length of time. Either they know why what they did is wrong, and promise not to do it again, or they don't. If they do so express, unblock them. If they don't, leave them blocked. --Jayron32 04:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks User:Jayron32 and User:Choess, the plan is as soon as they provide a clear description of what they will do differently I am more than happy to unblock them. This is what I have always done in the past. Student blocks I find some of the hardest as they have often been send to Wikipedia without proper training. But we also know from experience that are only here for the short term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
    • They don't need to be, we should always welcome all editors openly and encourage them to continue to contribute to the encyclopedia in the future - it could be as minor of a future action as a copyedit to some subject that interests them. We should never treat any student editor with any less courtesy then any other new editor. We all started with one edit. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
      • That's true, and I agree with the sentiment that we don't treat editors who are students any differently than editors who are not. Which is why we don't treat them differently here. Being a student or not being a student is irrelevant: if someone is not willing to learn some basic principles such as "don't steal the work of others and pass it off as your own", I see no reason to continue to allow them to steal the work of others, regardless of what they do outside of Wikipedia. --Jayron32 04:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
        • • User:Xaosflux do not get me wrong. I block non students for plagiarism too. It is harder in these cases as I realize that it has real life repercussions for them. If your first edits are plagiarism and than following a warning you next edits are also plagiarism we have a problem. The editor in question needs a bit of time to think on things. And should provide examples that they understand the issues in question. This is not something we should simply blow off. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
    • Plagiarism is never appropriate; it's something against which any good syllabus will warn, so we should assume that any college student is well aware of why it's a problem and of the likely result. We ought to be careful with enforcing most of our policies on student accounts, since they can't be expected to know them, but we need to be harsh with plagiarism: it's a horrid idea to sanction the student account (and thus potentially harm the real-life student's grade) for ordinary issues, but any decent professor will severely penalise a student for plagiarism, so if a student's plagiarising, we shouldn't act unusually softly. If the student engage productively, as here, of course we can unblock, as Doc James is hoping to do, but the severe sanctions for intellectual dishonesty (and thus for hoaxing, in a way) should follow just as rapidly with students as with established accounts. PS — I editconflicted with Xaosflux; everything before this was written before the conflict. Just responding to We should never treat...other new editor — some new editors are unaware of intellectual honesty problems such as plagiarism, but new student editors are aware that it's wrong. Nyttend (talk) 04:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
• I think that as long as the student is aware that copyright violations are not acceptable and they make a promise not to do it again, we should unblock the account. My only suggestion would be that the editor get warned that they will be watched quite closely and they will be indef'd again if it happens. However I do want to say that I agree with Nyttend's argument about dealing with plagiarism. If I'd done this in one of my classes and not made it a clear quote (using parentheses, which the editor in question did not use), I'd get my paper handed back and told to fix it... assuming I didn't get a F without the chance to re-do it. My teachers all have (and have had) a very clear zero acceptance policy for plagiarism. It's one of the first things that we're told in class and it's something that's been told to me throughout my college years- and I'm in a Master's program now. There's no way that this student would be completely unaware that plagiarism is unacceptable. Once? Sure- mistakes happen. Twice? That is a pretty big warning sign. Maybe this was just a case of the student being a little lazy due to the end of the semester, but the issue is that they still violated copyright- something that would land them a failing grade in school. The only way that this would be somewhat too harsh is if there was no way for the student to regain editing privileges. From what I see the student has acknowledged what they did was wrong and looks like they're willing to fix what they did, so a conditional unblock in this situation seems appropriate. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, All. I'm one of the campus ambassadors working with the Women and Health class at Barnard College. I really appreciate all of your time and efforts with this class, and regret that there were circumstances that required it. Over the course of the semester, students were required to complete the Training for Students, and met with us in smaller workshops (where we covered WP:MEDMOS, plagiarism, etc) but it's clear additional structures are needed. User:Doc_James and I had a productive conversation last night, and I am going to relay his feedback (and what I've read here and elsewhere) to my colleagues when we debrief next week. In the meantime, we're taking a close look at the work being done by our students and anyone with concerns about a specific student is welcome to contact me on my talk page. Megs (talk) 14:30, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I simply don't know

We appear to be going full steam in the direction of Google Knol. We at WP:MED are being filling with plagiarism, poorly sourced content and duplicate content. Some classes are:

1. Writing content in word perfect, not reading the existing articles, and simply dropping what they have written in place, thus we end up with duplication [18], [19], [20]
2. Adding plagiarism (have at least 5 classes of students in the last couple of days)
   1. User:Esth270 class of User:BrooklynProf
   2. 148.166.169.61 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 207.210.135.237 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), User:Neuroassignment unknown prof from Sacred Heart University
   3. User:Jzx6450, User:Minjae.Lee.uky, User:Gmoney61, User:Rchayd3 unknown prof but PhD students from Kentucky (17 in number)
   4. User:Rozo93, User:Isabel.guillen.5 class of User:NeuroJoe
   5. User:Thatnyc
3. Adding poorly sourced and poorly formatted content (more evidence here [21])

We need to do something different. Our current path is not working. If scaled this will kill Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know either, but I share your concerns, and I encourage the folks in the Education Program to take these concerns seriously. One thing I do know is that established editors should not hesitate to revert content that does not belong here. Even if the quantity of bad edits is sometimes overwhelming – and it is – there is always the option of reverting. And I want to emphasize part of the point of WP:NOTTA: the fact that student editors are students does not entitle them to kid-glove treatment. I saw comments above that student editors are entitled to the same considerations as other editors, and they are, but they must also be held to the same expectations as other editors. They can't have it one way and not the other. The way I look at it, the educational value of Wikipedia editing includes education in learning about WP:Consensus as well as about our policies and guidelines. Everyone else here faces the possibility of having our edits reverted and having to discuss them in talk, so there is nothing counter-educational in making students do likewise, or see their edits disappear. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm fully on board that an editor is an editor, if you are in article space be prepared to be reverted and edited boldly by anyone. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc Jones, I hear you loud and clear as edits related to medical articles, and do understand the importance of keeping them accurate and high quality; my suggested for student-editors would be more sandboxing; it gives them the freedom to make more errors without impacting our readers--and anything that is constructive can be merged in after article talk is happy. For single-semester type projects just outright copying an article to their sandbox and working on major drafts should be fine - so long as it gets cleared when complete and their instructors can see what was their work and what was the original (perhaps some sandbox talk type templates? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Wiki Ed completely agrees with Tryptofish that student editors should be held to the same standards as other editors: please assume good faith that they're trying to improve Wikipedia, but free free to revert content that doesn't belong. In terms of the specifics Doc James mentions, I certainly hear and appreciate the frustrations, and I'll link to my comments on the other thread: We're working on the Barnard issues (#1 above), and we've asked the Wikipedian working with that class, Megs, to chime in here to give a status update. The Sacred Heart, Kentucky, and NeuroJoe classes aren't affiliated with Wiki Ed, and while we're happy to help out with unaffiliated classes as we have time, our priority right now (during the busiest time of the year for us) is the classes affiliated with us. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed) I do see the education program as collaborators on dealing with this issue. The greater problems are from classes that have not had any support. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

We have talked about all of this Millions of times (see archives at ENB and ENI), and nothing changes ... well, no, something does change. It gets worse every year. Right now, a whole new course is popping in, dozens of students, active edit warring *and* real deal meat puppetry (one student reverting when another one leaves). When Will Someone Put Out A Press Release or some information to stem the tide? When will the denial stop? As a once productive and I hope valuable editor, this has made me leave WIkipedia for months at a time, and each time I come back, the situation is worse. No, Sandboxes won't help ... we've talked about that over and over. They don't engage talk, they don't know how to, their profs aren't engaged with the website at all, and it's not the students fault. When they work in sandbox, we still have the same problems of them plopping it all in at term-end, and the numbers have always been too big to manage, but just get worse and worse. If students do not engage talk, they should be shut down, in mercy to them and to us. We need some admin action. Why doesn't someone go deal with the whole CUNY class that is editwarring in dreadful content, and reverting for each other ? [22]SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• Education Program:CUNY, Hunter College/Human Development (Fall 2014), Pharos, Cshanesimpson, Mozucat

• Loads of editors from the same class in Eating disorder not otherwise specified, not a one of them responding on user or article talk, edit warring, and really ... the article should be fully protected to Get Them To Talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

•  Done 1 week, and I'm SURE it is on the The Wrong Version. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:06, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I just reached out to the professor of the CUNY Human Development course to make her aware of the situation regarding her students. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:16, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the things you have said here. As for sandboxes, they aren't really turning out to be the solution, because students often use them to create just the kinds of problematic content we have been discussing here, and then summarily copy and paste it to main space without any prior interaction with experienced editors. I've been seeing a lot of that happening lately, from students who are not part of a registered class project, and who leave Wikipedia as soon as they have done the dump. It's a growing problem. As I've said somewhere else (I'm losing track), it goes against WP:What Wikipedia is not to use pages as somewhere to dump a term paper that does not conform to our editing guidelines. It sounds to me like WikiEd needs some additional hires to be able to identify and deal with class projects that do not register. There are more and more of those, and they are a growing problem. After all, when the instructor has not bothered to work with WikiEd, then the class is all the more likely to not understand how things work. And that makes for a bad experience for students, just as much as for established editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• My opinion continues to be that where a course is engaging in meatpuppetry, we should block them. Where an institution is systematically engaging in meatpuppetry, we block them too. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

That might be a good solution User talk:Stuartyeates. Classes that wish to edit will be required to have a degree of training. Profs will need to be involved with Wikipedia and understand how Wikipedia works.

Another requirement could also include the school provide some funding to hire Wikipedia based "teaching assistants" to help with formatting and feedback to the students.

If these criteria are not met and the class decides to try to edit under the radar we block them until the end of the semester. Agree sandboxes do not solve the issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:34, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that solution too. I posted last week, at the top of the page, about not agreeing with WikiEd's philosophy and one of the most important points I've been trying to make for years, obviously ineffectually, is that if the profs aren't here editing with the students, or here editing to provide examples for the students to follow, then we'll have chaos. I've also said each year that my students don't want to edit here, yet WikiEd continues to woo institutions without providing adequate support during these crucial last weeks. Students perennially will wait until the last minute to do their work, and do whatever it takes to get it in. They don't care about talking, about WP policy etc., they simply care about getting the assignment done, taking the final and going home for the holidays. In the meantime we have kids posting requests like this. Can someone who is employed by WikiEd please reach out to these students and explain that their sandboxes are still available and reach out to the prof and explain that they can't edit here in mainspace as they have been doing today. Please. So far I've not seen much participation here from the folks at WikiEd. Victoria (tk) 00:45, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree we need to stop encouraging more classes to get involved until we are able to provide an appropriate level of support and have things working with a smaller number of classes.

But some will come to the idea of bringing their class to Wikipedia all by themselves. At that point it is not the Education foundation that has authority to say no, it is the Wikipedia community that has this authority. I am glad to see that we are beginning to do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

What I meant by sandboxes was to have the sandbox edits BE the assignment, so there is never a rush to dump to mainspace; if the sandbox ends up being good it could get merged and Wikipedia gains positive content, if not it gets deleted and maybe someone learned something about editing that they would use in the future? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Xaosflux that sounds excellent :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what the best namespace for these would be, EPT might work, sample at Education Program talk:CUNY, Hunter College/Human Development (Fall 2014)/Eating disorder not otherwise specified....problem is those don't support THEIR own talk. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:05, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Xaosflux, can you copy the article to here? This seems to the Nutrition.and.Health's workspace, and they can finish it there. I'll leave a message on their talkpage and on the article talk for them. Victoria (tk) 01:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done here: User:Nutrition.and.Health/sandbox/Eating disorder not otherwise specified. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps User:ProfessorNameHere/sandbox/articlecopy or something; and simultaneously more strongly encourage professors to use sandboxes? Really would like some WikiEd feedback here, I'm just guessing. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks so much! I don't know how to find the prof (and am totally wiped out from reading papers and exams), but I think someone should drop a short note on the prof's page supplying the link to the draft space with the article there. I'm not sure the students will know how to link it, or how they're supposed to turn in this assignment. The prof may expect to see it in article space tomorrow, and so should be notified. Adding post ec: WikiEd is AWOL so we have to punt. This will work. Victoria (tk) 01:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Prof is Cshanesimpson. I left a message there. Yes, it would be nice to get feedback from WikiEd. Victoria (tk) 01:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I noted the class talk as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that sandbox move, and to those of you who've helped out with this class — as Helaine noted above, she's reached out to the instructor, who told us in reply: "Students weren’t graded directly on their pages and this has been stressed throughout the semester. However, I’ve had a few student-groups that have stopped coming to class and are likely no longer following the rules outlined. The Wikipedia-editing assignment has closed, but I will follow up with these students to ensure that they understand the appropriate Wikipedia etiquette that is expected from community members." --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 04:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

From a prof who was not following the students, ever, apparently. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Time for an RFC

Summary of diffs for the record:

1. Edit warring [23] by User:Nutrition.and.Health (I have removed the AN3 since Xaosflux has now dealt with the problem).
2. Posts to User Nutrition.and.Health
3. Posts to Keicee7, whose edits indicate possible tag-teaming with User:Nutrition.and.Health
4. Posts to article talk before Xaosflux protected
5. First and only, ever, post to a talk page by User:Nutrition.and.Health finally happens only after Xoasflux protects the article: [24]
6. Most curious post from the prof, which is at odds with what the student says.
7. And the usual EP responses (we are communicating with the prof ... that's so nice ... but this is happening on hundreds of articles and from scores of classes).

So much fun while I was out enjoying my Mexican food. At any rate, just another typical Education Program scenario, played out in article after article, term after term, year after year. Thanks in order:

1. First, to Victoriaearle and Xaosflux for setting up and pointing the students to a sandbox. (At least those who weren't edit warring should be able to get their course grade.)
2. Second, to Xaosflux for protecting (of course, the wrong version of) the article, which *finally* brought the students to talk (which is where they should have started their Wiki Adventure).

It is not lost on me that the actions finally taken in here were not by representatives of the Education Program. It has never been lost on me that the Education Program representatives seem to spend a good portion of their time contacting profs backchannel (since of course, most of the profs don't know how to engage on Wikipedia) and generally promoting the Education Program whenever and wherever they can, while others in here have to clean up after the program.

Which brings me to my next point (considering we have been going round these same issues over and over for four years now). I don't really care for the distinction between courses that are or are not part of the formal Education Program. Students are here because this program and the WMF have promoted student editing, so the global problem affecting content and established editors is your concern, whether or not the courses are registered. While the WMF had no problem getting publicity to promote the alleged Gender Gap, we never see a word in the press about the disastrous effect student editing and the aggressive promotion of this program has had on the website, while we frequently see glowing webcasts, reports, articles, etc about these programs. Which serve to bring in more and more courses every year. So please stop brushing off concerns about unregistered courses: this program caused them.

On the subject of sandboxes: we've also been over and over that, and it has never helped. That horse bolted from the barn long ago, because this program was aggressively promoted in the press. Even when we tell students to edit in sandbox, they end up editing articles, and dropping entire sandboxes into articles anyway. That's why the unengaged profs are here: the free TAs only happen in mainspace. The fundamental problem is that we have students who have never learned to use talk, and cannot possibly learn the ins and outs of Wikipedia during one course, and who are editing only for a grade-- requiring an enormous investment in established editor time for no payout, since these students don't want to be here and never return or stay on as regular editors-- being not supervised by their absent professors, who know nothing of Wikipedia themselves, except that they are generally getting free TAs. And there are not enough student ambassadors (or whatever we're calling them this year) to even pretend to keep up with the student edits.

What is needed is an RFC to shut down the program. Then the classes who continue to do what we saw played out here-- which is the norm for student medical editing (and we've seen same at Yeats,[25] so it's not only medical)-- can be dealt with as any other meatpuppetry or coordinated editing situation would be dealt with. After all, the Education Program is doing nothing to stem the tide, plenty to promote the program, and when we finally get action, it's from non-EP editors like Victoria and Xaosflux. Alternately, an RFC might force some sort community enforcement guidelines on this program, and student editing overall. Since the Education Program cannot deal with the monster they and the WMF created, it should be turned back to the community, where decisions can be made about shutting down the program and setting up some enforcement guidelines, just like for any other editors.

What we also need is some very good publicity about the problems that this program is causing. I wouldn't want to be any one of these hapless students who have been placed in such awkward positions through the fault of their absent and ill-prepared professors because of a poorly-designed but well-promoted fiasco hoisted upon us by the WMF. Whenever we have to crack down on a student editor, I am reminded of how unfair it is, what a high price they are paying because of their profs, and if one of my children were in one of these courses, I would be horrified. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I am more sympathetic than some to the goals (if not the methods) of the Education Program, but I agree that it's long past time for an RFC. In the first instance, this would be a follow-up to the original RFC, which was closed as "no clear consensus," but was taken anyhow as a green light to go ahead with the Wiki Education Foundation. But a RFC is also in order given that the Foundation and the Program has gone in such a different direction from that originally proposed by the Education Working Group. And it doesn't help that there are essentially no longer any active Wikipedians on the organization's Board. It's now been two years since I raised this issue first. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Honestly after seeing all this play out a few times even in my relatively short time here, I'd be in favor of scrapping things quite a bit. If we knew that professors would be actively engaged with smaller classes, this could be ok, but it's the large numbers of unsupervised students that causes trouble. I'd rather see a requirement that if students are assigned to work on Wikipedia, they do so in their sandbox only, and that's where the grade is. After grading, the students could try to work on the actual page on their own time, or at least alert folks on the talk page of their sandbox, and folks can pull what they want from it. The professor needs to do the grading at some point, so they could see the complete work in a sandbox much easier, and it would save us the conflict of interest and tag teaming issues we see from students. That seems like it would be a potential solution. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Hey User:Kingofaces43 I think that is another great suggestion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Where have prior "sandbox" suggestions failed? Did they have support of instructors that expected sandbox work? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Xoas, it would be instructive to read the archives here (and at WP:ENB, since this board was only set up recently). There is so much. The sandbox thing is practically WP:PEREN. This has been going on, unabated, for years. The problem courses have no interest in using sandboxes; the free TAs come in mainspace. And we talk about these problems every November–December and April–May, then they're forgotten until the next miserable term-end. Now, while this is fresh, is the time to get up an RFC and get this program either shut down, or subjected to some community enforcement guidelines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:09, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Sandy, do you recall if a more strict idea like I proposed above been tossed about before? I haven't entirely convinced myself yet, but pretty a good chunk of me feels that editing an actual article is just too much of a conflict of interest for a student since their grade depends on it. I'd say just remove that conflict of interest entirely. It could seem harsh for folks who want to try to use students as workhorses for "improving" articles (not sure student assignments are a net positive), but it seems like an actual solution when I put both my editor and class instructor hats on. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:29, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, generally student grades shouldn't depend on mainspace editing. A least not students in courses that Wiki Ed has a relationship with. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, I really don't know if anything strict has ever been implemented (we mostly get hand-waving in here). The editor who has in the past most pushed for the sandbox idea is SlimVirgin; maybe she can respond. Some classes use sandboxes, some don't, some classes register, some don't, some drop sandbox edits into mainspace, some don't, but the core problem is the same across the board: uninvolved, unengaged profs who are ill-prepared to edit Wikipedia themselves, expecting ill-prepared students to do something they can't do themselves, and hoisting their teaching duties off onto us. The Education Program has shown either no interest in, or no ability to, get poor student editing out of mainspace. That doesn't seem to be what they view as their job (it seems there are numerous EP employees whose job is to promote the program, and it seems the mistake regular editors have made is to come here for enforcement, rather than go to ANI where admins would block instead of having nice friendly chats with profs). But Slim might answer your direct query ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:09, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm kind of with Sandy on this. In the real world, it doesn't work. Why? Accountability. Students are accountable to their teachers for their grade, but we have no control over the grade criteria (does it include NPOV/WEIGHT? RS/MEDRS? MOS/MEDMOS?). So students have conflicts of interest with regard to WP and have no long term accountability to WP. And this is even more true of teachers, and even more true of the institutions where teachers work. How do we increase accountability? Do you see how the Education thing is structurally messed up? Sandy's idea to engage our normal behavior tools more (ANI, 3RR, and I would add, COIN) with students is OK, but the onslaught is too fierce, and too brief, for that to be effective with regard to students. What if we moved the sanctions up higher? If a teacher's students damage WP this semester, the teacher is blocked for the next six months, and the teacher's supervisor is informed - and that conversation includes a warning that... (not sure here)... if it happens again, a six month IP-range block will be given to the school. Not sure about that IP-range block thing, but I am trying to think how to ultimately hold the institution accountable. You see where I am going? Hold someone/something that persists on the school side, accountable. And I am talking about all teachers - not just teachers who formally sign up with Project Education. It would take Project Ed making this policy-like, and when we find "rogue" teachers, pointing them to that policy and saying, "you need to make sure your students are building an encyclopedia, or we are going to have remove your privileges so you can learn that this is important..... Thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 05:13, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, YES, hold teachers accountable. Block 'em. Oh wait, they never edit, so what good is it to block them. Never mind. Contact their university? Won't work in practice, but as soon as someone from "in here" contacts the boss of someone from "out there", they end up banned by ArbCom or the community :) All we can do in here is reverse their course rights, which I doubt the friendly EP staff will do. As a parent of any one of these students, I would be furious at the wasted tuition I was paying, so we should start telling students to complain to their parents, their Deans, and their school newspapers about ALL courses using Wikipedia. Publicity. Block schools? You betcha. That's why we should be having these conversations at ANI, where admins are less likely to put up with this BS, rather than in here, where people's salaries depend on continuing the program. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The only thing reversing their course rights would do is prevent them from managing course pages...and classes without course pages are much harder to track and effectively deal with. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:32, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Nikkimaria thanks for your comment, Do you have any ideas about how to increase accountability for schools and teachers - things that persist on the user side? Do you see my point, that the tools WP has to hold editors accountable, just don't work when students edit WP for classes? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 16:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Bluerasberry i have found you very thoughtful on education issues. Do you have any ideas about how to increase accountability on the teacher/school side? thx. Jytdog (talk) 16:42, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget #4 on your list: students making last minute bogus edits (bordering on vandalism) just to get their names in the edit summary for credit, such as [26] and [27]. --166.20.224.13 (talk) 18:43, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

In real life, I was a long-time university professor, and I've seen way too much of the inner workings of higher education. As other editors noted above, students see their accountability as lying with the instructor or TA who grades them, and not with Wikipedia. When the instructor or TA does not care about what editors here say, then we are not going to persuade them. Period. TAs are thinking about getting through the day. Faculty, if they are tenured or tenure-track, are evaluated on research, not teaching. And if faculty are non-tenure track, they are overwhelmed with a heaving teaching load and low pay. So forget about contacting the institution, once the instructor has demonstrated a lack of serious interest. We should not hesitate to revert bad edits, semi-protect affected pages, and block, or even rangeblock, the offending accounts. That's where we have control. If part of the educational experience is to find out what happens at Wikipedia, well, those are the kinds of things that happen.

And shutting down WikiEd is a bad idea. Instead, WikiEd needs to revise their mission to not simply be cheerleaders for class projects, and be able to hire enough personnel to be able to deal with the problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:07, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposal A

Preamble: Wikipedia has become a much used and trusted source of medical information. We thus have an obligation to make it as high quality as we can. Due to past issues with classes of students editing certain minimum requirements are needed before future classes will be allowed to edit healthcare content. The minimum requirements include:

1. A list of students and articles the students are working on must be provided. Each student must link to this list on their user page. The instructor(s) must also be identified.
2. The instructor must provide an overview of how they plan to run their course for community input. They must get consensus for the proposed idea before implementation. Certain plans that have prior consensus may be used as is. A link to the plan should occur on the same page as the list of students.
3. Instruction must include:
   1. discussion of copyright infringement and how to avoid this by paraphrasing
   2. how to format references using citation templates (see WP:MEDHOW)
   3. what qualifies as a proper source per WP:MEDRS and why
   4. our manual of style at WP:MEDMOS, touching on our ordering of sections, and proper punctuation and language choice for Wikipedia
   5. how to use talk pages and sign ones name
   6. time to read the entire article and to have discussion about WP:DUE before they begin working
4. A plan for having students supervised during their time on Wikipedia needs to be in place. If the professor is an experience Wikipedian they may do so themselves. Otherwise they must hire part of a "teaching assistant" to supervise their students. If students will not be editing mainspace this last requirement may not be required.

If these requirements are not meet the community may deny students access to edit Wikipedia. If students are found to be plagiarizing they will be blocked until after the end of the term following the first infraction as it will be acknowledged that they have had instructions on this issue already. An in person discussion with their instructor will be required before they can return to editing.

What do people think as a starting point for discussion?

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any problems, but links are going to medical things and it will be applied for all educations? Then links should be fixed to general MOS/RS/etc. — Revi 03:56, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree, there is much more to the encyclopedia than medical articles--are you suggesting a different set of requirements for only these types of articles? And bans for 2nd strikes are extremely excessive. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:00, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

This is just a proposal for those working on medical content. Copyright infringement usually ends ones career in academia. I meant block rather than ban and have changed to "until the end of the term". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc, I think your proposal falls prey to the same error we (regular editors) have been making for four years: that is, putting something in place that we expect the Education Program to police or enforce. The Education Program staff has grown as the Education Program promotes the Education Program. They are not here to enforce, they are not going to enforce, and we should have learned that by now. I am not too interested in putting into place anything else that they can't or won't enforce.

I believe we should stop reporting student editing problems on this board, and start taking them to ANI instead, where admins are less likely to consider having friendly chats with unengaged profs as "doing their job". I would prefer that we work for an RFC to shut this program down, period. It is a program whose paid staff is tasked with ... promoting the program ... resulting in more paid staff ... resulting in more program ... resulting in more bad student editing. Nothing about this problem has improved over the years. We should work for changes to blocking policy (addressing the meat puppetry aspect specifically of student editing, and the copyvio, and the other specific problems with students); engage ANI to get more regular admins building awareness of how very bad the problem is (by using this board instead of ANI, we have isolated the rest of the community from the severity of the problem); and initiate RFCs or discussions on every policy page that might engage admins from outside this little walled community of the EP to begin to do something about this problem. Here, we are talking to the walls, to people who have jobs to protect. At ANI, we will be talking to regular editors and admins, who have been sheltered from awareness of this problem by the very fact that the Education Program made this board their own after it was initially set up to report student editing problems. We have a closed circuit here, and one side isn't able to do anything about it. Admins can. We should be over at ANI. We should not be making more proposals to people who have jobs to keep, and can't or won't enforce anything. And no one except those of us who have dealt with these problems read these boards ... Xaos was a welcome addition, but we are generally preaching to the choir in here and wasting our time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

This however is something we the community would enforce. We see students editing without approval and we simply block and revert their edits.

Instructors need to get approval from the community before running programs. Maybe they should need to apply each semester so that we can decide if we want back the ones who have cause issues? If they are working in mainspace there needs to be a follow up plan in place to have their students work reviewed.

There is no one able to force profs to use the education program. Thus the education program do not really have any authority. Remember that prof from U of T? He keeped at it even after both the community and the WEF told him to stop. All told him it was a bad idea all along in fact. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:26, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we will have to enforce it, because EP staff's job is to have friendly chats with profs. So, that still means we are discussing this, and making proposals, in the wrong place, where it falls on deaf ears, and shields the broader community from the severity of the problems. We need to go change policies, guidelines, and begin bringing our problems to ANI, not talking to walls in here. And we need to not be discussing on these pages, rather getting this project shut down. Maybe the community, not this program, should be granting course and professor approval. Xaos initial wading into the waters here is what made me realize ... we are barking up the wrong tree in thinking that people whose jobs depend on this program are going to do anything to make our editing any less miserable because of their job. We should be talking over at blocking policy page, or starting a new guideline page for student editing, which can be submitted to RFC for community approval, and ultimately taking this authority away from the Education Program and returning it to the community (which the EP has failed to serve). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:47, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The EP staff I would hope will do most of the education component. Preparing handouts and helping arrange Wikipedians to present to classes.

We do need staff to take care of the on Wiki components though. And blocks will need to come from the community. The universities I hope will come up with some funding for this.

Hoping we could put together a draft here to eventually present to ANI. Do you feel these measures are sufficient? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

how about adding UNDUE to things they have to consider - namely, the whole article? Jytdog (talk) 05:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

per my thoughts above, how about adding sanctions on teachers whose students edit badly, escalating to institutions whose teachers allow students to edit badly? Jytdog (talk) 05:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The instructors typically are not editing. The hope is to change that and have them help manage their students or to at least provide funding so that we can hire someone to do the job. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc, we've designed a new handout every year for four years. We have so many handouts I've lost track of where to find them. They don't get read, and profs don't follow their students. We are going in circles here. The folks running this program aren't in the trenches, and don't know how to design and effectively administer a course. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:22, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes we need more people in the trenches. Thus the requirement that they provide funding to hire someone to be in the trenches. There needs to be guidance both in the real world and on line.

If this is not agreed to than we move to blocking editors but we should at least try to come up with a reasonable option that may work for all sides. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:34, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of hearing from staff how they can help make our Wikipedia experience less miserable, and what plans they have to prevent article deterioration. I'm not in favor of hearing any more of their "not in our program, not our problem" excuses (their program led to the problem), or about any more of their friendly off-Wiki chats with profs who don't engage Wikipedia. Maybe they can start by encouraging profs to talk to them on Wikipedia. Or requiring them to, you know, actually log on and watchlist their students and the articles they edit. Those would be some good starting points for EP staff. But we still have the problem that admins "out there" have no idea what has gone on "in here", and we should start getting enforcement out there, at ANI. And something more specific about courses written into blocking policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I will bring this to the education foundation next week and than we can bring it to ANI. It should be possible to turn this into a benefit for all involved, the students, Wikipedia, and their profs. But we need clear expectations for all involved. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: Yes, that UofT psychology class from 2 years ago was an absolute nightmare. I originally tried to defend the prof. Guess how he thanked me. He called me a "cyberstalker", engaged in workplace harassment and issued legal threat at me. I didn't mention anything in public at that time because the Foundation said their legal team will take care of it. Fastfoward to the next term. He personally stopped using Wikipedia for his class but instead delegated his Ph.D student (and previously a campus ambassador) to serve as his proxy and continue putting student work into Wikipedia (albeit for a 30-student class rather than 1800+) for no less than 2 summers. Even the contents produced from that smaller class was questionable at best. If we are addressing this issue down to the root, we also need to tackle meatpuppetry such as the example I showed. Profs have virtually unlimited number of grad students who can easily circumvent the system. But ending things on a positive note. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some profs do know how Wikipedia works and has a good handle on matters. Since last year, we have a prof that is teaching mycology ^{Education Program talk:University of Toronto/HMB436H Medical and Veterinary Mycology (2014 Fall)/support}. Even though it has a similar class size as the smaller-psychology class, the quality of materials coming out of the mycology is far superior. The prof even donated over 50 freely licensed fungi images from his personal collection where the free versions are hard, if not impossible, to obtain. It just shows you the night and day difference between different profs from the same institution. So while I agree with sanctioning classes (or profs) that engage in meatpuppetry, I have to oppose on institutional level. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:18, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Ian (Wiki Ed)'scomment above was really interesting. [28] If students are not supposed to be graded for mainspace edits, a lot of people haven't heard that message yet (myself included until now). If this was actually followed, this should diffuse all of our issues (and might validate the sandbox only approach more). Should we have the community enforcing this in some fashion? Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Since so much discussion between paid staff and professors occurs off-Wikipedia, backchannel, I wonder what accountability the profs have for these statements anyway? I'm not convinced students aren't graded. Or maybe they get extra credit. They certainly get desperate at term-end, and there's a reason for that, so these notions that they aren't graded are hard to reconcile. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

If you've ever worked with large groups of undergrads, you'll realise that some people don't read the syllabus or email. I don't know how many times I've had students email me about a question, and then a few days later in class say "did you get my email?" To which I reply "Yes, and I replied to it. And yes, as the syllabus says..." It's human nature - there are always some students who know the syllabus better than you do, and some who will never read it. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 12:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The proposal shows that there are some basic problems with how you're handling these perceived crises. Edits by students can be a problem because they don't edit like usual Wikipedia editors. All they do is add a few sections (WikiProject Medicine's terminology for that is "dump chunks of content"). And then they leave. Many do not edit each other's contributions, they don't revert them, check them, thank each other, upgrade article class, list articles for GA. So the inherent control mechanism of a wiki is not in place. All attempts to improve the situation would have to start right there, with attempts to install a self-healing ability to the new content. WikiProject Medicine doesn't have the human resources to check all contributions - so crowdsource these human resources by asking the students to provide them.
The result of the current situation is that medical editors often aren't perceived as welcoming by the students. All the more reason for them to leave after adding a section. The purpose of this Education program however is among others to recruit new editors. If you scare the new editors off, they will not stay and you will have an ever worsening "outnumbering situation" - it's 100 to 1 this quarter, it might be 200 to 1 next quarter unless we're getting some of the editors to stay and help with reviewing the assignments next term.--^Melody _Lavender 16:24, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

This is another of the perennial arguments that comes around in these discussions (we're chasing them off). I invite you to peruse klazomania and the ridiculously extensive editing I had to do to salvage something there from an obscure topic about which there are no sources and which gets basically no pageviews-- mentoring, guiding, and talk page interaction between me and the students, resulting in a better then decent article and good interaction with the students ... and show me one of them that has returned ? I have more examples. This argument is not representative. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Much of the work you did on that article could have been done by another student. They can provide feedback for each other. The liasons could consult instructors to construct the assigments in such a way that they edit fewer articles and check each others work. A person at college age can find out whether a source is primary, some of them will know how to paraphrase in such a way as to not infringe on copyright. --^Melody _Lavender 16:47, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Your first sentence is laughably insulting, so I will dignify it with no further reply (student work.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

If only being "nice" cause students to stick around and become good editors. I have worked with tons of students and provided much very supportive feedback. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:16, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Moving forward

Just wanted to flag that Wiki Ed staff is concentrating on articles right now — obviously there's some serious issues with our students' editing in the medical fields, and we will definitely be changing things in the future. I'm not ready to say what those things are yet: My team's focus is on cleaning up the bad edits right now. Once the term is over and content is cleaned up, our focus will turn to looking at systematically what was the underlying cause(s) of what went wrong, and how can we do better next term. We do want to do better, because our focus is on improving Wikipedia. If what we're doing doesn't improve Wikipedia, we want to change what we're doing to make sure we are improving Wikipedia. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The repeated statement that Wiki Ed staff members are going through articles is not reassuring. I've been through numerous articles on the heels of Wiki Ed staff, where I have found they are not cleaning them up. I am not reassured that some of you are any better at content editing than some of our students. Please produce lists of articles and students biannually, so the community of active and involved editors can peruse the damage. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

What is wrong seems pretty easy to spot right now: (a) Students are being graded on mainspace edits (b) students do all work at the last moment, flooding issues in at end-of-term times. You will never fix (b). — xaosflux ^Talk 16:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

We'll never fix (b) - ever - and that's why the first thread on this page is the one I posted about the Yeats article. It goes beyond medical articles, the students will always throw in their work at the last moment, and until we can immerse professors here (which I don't think can be done) and WikiEd staff, then what's wrong can't be fixed. Ever. The volunteers here can quickly list what the causes are, what went wrong, and how to fix it. Victoria (tk) 17:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Instructor rights

See Course instructor right request, with plenty of concerned feedback and input from Doc James and myself.

See User:Saguaromelee (listed as an epinstructor).

I've searched high and low, and am unable to find the place where one determines what user rights were granted to what editor and specifically, by whom. (I'd be curious to see my own record.) In the case above, Helaine mentioned she granted the rights (pretty much immediately); where does one check who granted rights for other professors?

More importantly, does the Education Program hand out instructor, and other user rights, regardless of feedback from the community? I would like to hear from a Wiki Ed staff member on this.

My sense is that no matter the effort regular editors put in to trying to convince instructors to modify faulty course design in advance for the avoidance of headaches down the line, the EP staff is going to go ahead and grant instrustor rights. Another accountability issue, and one where the regular editing community needs to start making its voice heard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia: Granting of user rights shows up in the "User rights log" at Special:Log. If you select "User rights log" from the dropdown and add the user in the "Target" field, you can see the history of user rights that were granted to them. Here's your own record.

In terms of the procedure, we've been granting rights to courses for which Jami or Helaine have reviewed the course plan and it seems good. Suguaromelee's request is the first one I can think of in a while where there's been significant commumnity discussion; I don't think the intention is to grant requests in the face of significant community opposition, although in this case I think we're looking at pretty minor tweaks to the course plan or things that in general we just need to make more explicit in the standard components of course plans.

We're continually looking for ways to systematically improve course design. Please check out the lastest version of the Assignment Design Wizard, which is what I've been working on for the last few months. The purposes of this tool are to a) explain best practices in assignment design; b) allow instructors to choose from among the best practices which things they would like to do in their own assignment; and c) provide a draft course plan reflecting those choices. Saguaromelee's assignment plan was based on the Assignment Design Wizard output (a slightly earlier version that what is running right now). I welcome suggestions for improving the wizard's output, as any changes will end up reflected in the majority of assignments next term.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Sage. So, it is reasonable for the community to begin to give feedback at ENB course instructor requests? As you can see from my comments on the Saguaromelee request page, I think we have identified the source of many of our problems, and I wish y'all would stop granting rights on that kind of (faulty) course design. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Since your comments are really about the best practices for assignment design (which we're trying to build into the wizard, so that it's easy for an instructor to create an assignment plan that both follows best practices and fits into their class schedule and goals), I'm going to start a new thread at WP:ENB on that topic. It's certainly reasonable for the community to give feedback on assignment plans, and we shouldn't be going forward with bad plans. I've put a lot of thought into assignment design, and plans along the lines of Saguaromelee's represent our current ideas of what a good assignment plan looks like. It's also the type of assignment plan that, in most cases, works pretty well. Your suggestions address some of the specific issues you've been seeing when it doesn't work so well. We're eager to refine it further and find ways of preventing the common problems, and your list of suggestions make a great starting point for doing so.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I look forward to your thread, best as always, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

What the "rights" do

The instructor right is very limited as to what it actually does. For details see: Special:ListGroupRights; they have no permissions to anything except in the education program. For need-based requests, instructors may get "account creator" and or "Ip block exemptions", however these incur no special access to other users or articles.

@SandyGeorgia:, to see YOUR rights go to here, change the name in the URL for others. To see the history of these go to here, change the name in the URL for others. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Anyone can view their own current groups in Special:Preferences, near the top as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:40, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaos! I recognize(d) that the actual instructor rights don't confer the ability to do much, but the granting of those rights presents an opportunity to emphasize best practices to the profs applying for them, and to make sure they have adequate course design; we should take advantage of that opportunity! When the community sees a problematic course design, they should speak up. No? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 11 December 2014 (UTC)